RCMP Watch

Tonda MacCharles - Toronto Star

Zaccardelli now says he didn’t know of errors made by Mounties
OTTAWA—RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli has flatly contradicted his own earlier testimony about how much he knew about RCMP mistakes in the Maher Arar affair.

Zaccardelli now says he and other senior RCMP officials did not know about those mistakes until a judge’s inquiry report came out in September.

In September, he testified he knew much earlier that RCMP investigators had erroneously told American authorities that Arar was an “Islamic extremist” with ties to Al Qaeda.

That testimony set off a storm of criticism about his lack of action in correcting the errors or informing his political masters about them.

In a speech to a Canadian Club luncheon in Ottawa yesterday he revised his story.

“Senior personnel and officers in the RCMP did not recognize the nature and extent of the inaccuracies of the information that was shared until they were discovered and analyzed by the Commission of Inquiry.”

Zaccardelli’s speech came on the eve of an important appearance by him today at the Commons public safety committee.

The country’s top cop is in a bid to keep his job because he told a very different story to the same committee just three months ago — a story contradicted by three former ministers who said the RCMP kept the former Liberal government in the dark about its errors on the Arar file.

Zaccardelli, who in September said the force did inform ministers about the details that he himself knew, now says ministers were not given that key information because even he didn’t have it.

“When ministers were briefed about the circumstances of the Arar case, their briefings did not include the fact that some inaccurate information had been provided to the Americans by the RCMP,” he said yesterday.

“This was not recognized by the RCMP at the time, and senior officials including myself, were not informed until the Commission of Inquiry completed its work.”

Asked about the discrepancy with his earlier version of events, Zaccardelli denied there was one, adding if there was any “confusion” or “misinterpretation” arising out of his earlier testimony, he looked forward to clarifying things at today’s committee hearing.

Arar’s lawyer Lorne Waldman said in an interview yesterday: “It’s unbelievable. It’s a total about-face.

“He wasn’t misinterpreted before. We all heard what he said that day. The problem is, what he said gave rise to so many questions. If he knew, as he said he did on Sept. 28, … then why in the world did he not do something?

“His defence (now) is `I wasn’t personally involved, I didn’t personally know.’ Surely as commissioner of the RCMP he should have known, he should have been involved, and he should have taken it upon himself to intercede and make sure justice was done,” Waldman said.

On Sept. 28, Liberal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler asked Zaccardelli about revelations by the public inquiry that careless misidentification of Arar as an “Islamic extremist” had “very likely” put him in jeopardy.

“My question, then, to you, commissioner, is what did you know and when did you know it?”

Zaccardelli said he had been generally aware a “serious investigation had been going on for some time” and that Arar was a person of interest.

“I personally became directly involved in the file after Mr. Arar was detained and sent to Syria. After he was in Syria, the matter was brought to my attention. I informed myself of that. I asked for the file and I asked for specific documents relating to what happened,” Zaccardelli said in September.

“In the process of getting that information, I found out that investigators were speaking with American officials while he was in detention. As part of that discussion, or that correspondence with RCMP officials, I learned that in that process they tried to correct what was labelled false or incorrect information with regard to Mr. Arar.

“That was the first time it came to my attention that there was a possibility or that we had mis-labelled or mis-characterized Mr. Arar in our dealings with him in the investigation.”

On Oct. 9, 2002, the U.S. deported Arar, who held dual Canadian and Syrian citizenship, to Syria via Jordan, where he was tortured for more than two weeks. The Syrian government confirmed to Canadian officials on Oct. 21, 2002, that they were detaining him. Arar’s family and lawyer immediately began lobbying the Canadian government to secure his release.

Asked at the same September hearing by Bloc Québécois MP Serge Ménard why he did not inform the minister of the day of the RCMP errors, Zaccardelli said the government was informed.

“When we learned what had occurred, we had discussions with the minister to inform him of the situation and we began to notify the authorities of what had happened in this case,” Zaccardelli testified.

But Ménard challenged Zaccardelli as to why he did not reveal Arar’s innocence publicly and why he let Arar “rot for almost a year in a Syrian prison.”

Sources say many in the Conservative government caucus think Zaccardelli deserves to lose his job over the handling of the Arar matter and are at a loss to explain why Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not demanded his resignation.

Following Zaccardelli’s statement, the government continued to assert its confidence. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said “he still has the confidence of the government as does the entire RCMP which is doing a great job of keeping us safe on our streets.”

Opposition MPs were disturbed yesterday by the commissioner’s new comments. New Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said it was “perplexing.”

“This is an amazing jaw-dropping contradiction,” said Liberal MP Mark Holland. “I’m extremely upset about this because I feel that we have not been told the truth.”

The NDP’s Joe Comartin said: “Obviously his credibility is on the line.”

In September, and again yesterday, Zaccardelli downplayed the significance of the RCMP errors, citing the O’Connor report and claiming there was no way to know what information the Americans based their deportation decision on, since they did not participate in the inquiry.

To this day, he says, the Americans have not divulged whether they had information independent of that supplied by the RCMP.

The O’Connor inquiry, after an exhaustive two-year inquiry, criticized the RCMP for its careless transmission of unverified information to U.S. authorities. The judge also slammed the RCMP’s failure to disclose its errors to senior government officials in a briefing on Nov. 14, 2003, after Arar had been released and went public with his tale of rendition and torture.

The judge completely cleared Arar and said the RCMP’s misidentification of Arar as an “Islamic extremist” put him in jeopardy.